Significant strides have been made in the provision of service through the use of e-Government, according to head of advocacy, Mr Gaogaufi Mako.
In an interview, Mr Mako said the enrolment of electronic government (E-gov) was still at an infancy stage but progress had been made.
"In a scale of out of seven, we are probably at number four, where government now as we speak has some downloadable forms that are not re-engineered. We need to re-engineer our processes for us to be more efficient," he said.
He said there had been a lot of perception across with regards to implementation of e-gov, but noted that government must institutionalise e-gov first before thinking of implementation.
"Once we have institutionalised e-gov, that is when we will no longer see the use of paper," he said.
Mr Mako who could not ascertain how much impact has been made with regards to services offered through e-gov to citizens, said the programme was driven by ministries with different mandates, hence it was difficult to tell, but noted that progress was visible in departments that provide high volume services to customers.
Mr Mako said substantial services were online and that e-gov had made life a lot easier for many Batswana who use it.
The services currently offered online are - notification platforms where people are reminded of some services at land boards and Department of Transport, Road Safety, the BURS tax return service online, the telemedicine, procurement of books online and registering of companies.
Asked as to why paper work was still used in government departments, he said paper cannot be eliminated because the process requires extensive change management and re-engineering of processes.
"E-gov needs extensive change management, hence paper will still be there while working on the transformation," he said. He said there was mentality of people overestimating the value of what they have hence overestimation of the value of what they may gain by giving up.
Mr Mako noted that the programme was engulfed by a plethora of problems ranging from infrastructure, legislation issues and processes re-engineering. He cited that inhibiting acts keep cropping up in some of the services offered through e-gov because in some services one has to be gazetted to perform certain duties which need to be revisited and amended.
E- Government involves digital interactions between a government and its citizens, businesses, employees, governmental agencies and organisations amongst others.
Through E-gov, government can raise public sector service quality to greater heights as citizens will access government information and services at any time.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Mmoniemang Motsamai
Quelle/Source: AllAfrica, 05.03.2015
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